Before Laura and I came in contact with John Torell, we were living what I consider to be a typical lifestyle of idolatry, listening to rock music and watching ungodly television and movies. If we happened to have an extra glass of wine and got buzzed, it was all in good fun. We had no idea how these practices impacted us spiritually because we were spiritually empty. We watched the scariest movies we could find to try and get a spiritual “fix,” and when the movies no longer filled the gap, we ended up searching for an alternative. We took a wrong turn on Netflix and viewed a documentary called Zeitgeist. While this movie raised some interesting questions, it did so with incomplete mainstream propaganda. This nudged us into the realm of the New Age and we started questioning the existence of Jesus.

Then we came upon David Icke and his reptilian theories but red flags started popping up in our minds. These New Age ideas were on the fringes of religion, insinuating an alien savior and how the Paladians were coming to evangelize us. I was intrigued but there was a subtle aftertaste of deceit because they avoided the Bible and the truth it offers. We had almost gotten to the point of throwing away our Bibles when the Holy Spirit gave us our final warning! My wife and I started hearing thoughts in our heads that were not ours. These thoughts were murderous, violent and pure evil. We ran as fast as we could back to the Bible and asked Jesus for forgiveness and repented for having ever doubted.

I turned off David Icke and found myself listening to a radio show on Blog Talk Radio called The Hagmann and Hagmann Report. One of the guests made mention of Shannon Davis on Omega Man Radio. We started poking around the chat room and listening to the archives and found that his show focused on deliverance through Jesus. We were fascinated and listened to a couple of the mass deliverances offered by some of the guest Pastors. We started off with Ivory Hopkins, John Kyle, and Jim Croft among others. When we heard Pastor John give a teaching on the curses of the Bible and the relevance of the Old Testament, we knew that this was something that we had not heard before. Laura had a reflexology and acupressure business and she emailed multiple pastors seeking advice. John Torell was the only one that responded and told us that these practices are based in the occult. We shut down the business he next day and never looked back.

We had ordered a few different books on deliverance and for the most part they were all the same. Pastor John’s book, Christian Dynamics Course 1, was completely different. It offered a more thorough introduction to the Christian faith and the dynamics of curses and bondage. As we studied and read through the book, we learned how to break the curses and remove the demonic legal grounds for us to be oppressed. We completed a fairly in-depth study of the book with Pastor John answering questions along the way. During this process we also cleansed our house of any occult items. The learning curve was pretty steep because everyday objects that we accept as simple decorations are actually doorways to demon oppression. We were financially strapped but decided nevertheless that we should see Pastor John in person. We had enough air miles to cover the flights and were able to get a discount on a room at a local B&B. It seemed that God wanted us to go!